Doctors Health Press Reports on Study: Many People with Fibromyalgia Misdiagnosed

Doctors Health Press, a division of Lombardi Publishing Corporation and publisher of various natural health newsletters, books, and reports, including the popular online Doctors Health Press e-Bulletin, is reporting on a new study, published in Arthritis Care & Research, suggesting that a large number of North American adults, mainly men, have fibromyalgia, but have not been diagnosed with it.

Doctors Health Press Reports on Study: Many People with Fibromyalgia Misdiagnosed

The Disease That’s More Common Than Most People Think.

Boston, MA (PRWEB) January 06, 2013

Doctors Health Press, a division of Lombardi Publishing Corporation and publisher of various natural health newsletters, books, and reports, including the popular online Doctors Health Press e-Bulletin, is reporting on a new study, published in Arthritis Care & Research, suggesting that a large number of North American adults, mainly men, have fibromyalgia, but have not been diagnosed with it.

As Doctors Health Press e-Bulletin (http://www.doctorshealthpress.com/pain-articles/the-disease-thats-more-common-than-most-people-think) notes, fibromyalgia—a pain condition that is difficult to diagnose and treat—may be afflicting a lot more people than was previously thought. One of the problems diagnosing fibromyalgia symptoms is that it can often overlap with other conditions or be mistaken for something else. Common symptoms include pain (which can be widespread and in different parts of the body), high fatigue, problems sleeping, memory lapses, and mood issues.

As the article “The Disease That’s More Common Than Most People Think” reports, researchers in Olmsted County, Minnesota used a well-documented pool of medical records in many ways to try to accurately gauge the number of people over 21 who had fibromyalgia. They found more than 3,000 patients who fit the description, only one-third of whom were actually diagnosed with fibromyalgia.

The Doctors Health Press e-Bulletin article outlines that, using another method, researchers honed in on fibromyalgia-specific criteria, like widespread pain and tenderness, fatigue, feeling unrested after waking, cognitive problems (with memory or thinking clearly), and depression or anxiety. The survey respondents counted 830, and 44 of them met these criteria. Only 12 were diagnosed with fibromyalgia.

According to the article, the researchers believe that as many as 6.4% of adults over 21 in the U.S. have fibromyalgia—far more than the number officially diagnosed. Meaning that the numbers across North America could be much higher—about six times more people than originally believed. Though more common among women, according to the new study, men are by far the more under-diagnosed of the two. Twenty times more men appeared to have fibromyalgia, based on their survey response, than had been diagnosed (compared to three times more women).